Getting useful information in a timely manner is one of the
hardest tasks citizens face in the process of solving problems
related to public and/or governmental services.
Citizens Advice Bureaux (CAB) or Information and
Referral services have been set up in several countries to
serve as intermediaries between citizens and available services
(Marcella and Baxter, 2000a). With the broadening of
e-government initiatives, the use of the Internet has penetrated
many of these services as web-based services. SHIL,
the Israeli Citizens Advice Bureau, was established in 1957.
Nowadays, about one thousand volunteers operate SHIL
offices in 55 municipalities throughout the country and
SHIL also runs a telephone hot-line and an Internet site
(http://shil.info) (Ministry of Social Affairs and Social
Services, 2009; Tractinsky et al., 1998). SHIL operates
through the Israeli Ministry of Social Affairs and Social
Services in collaboration with the municipalities.
This research investigates citizens’ information needs
through a variety of sources. We gather the needs and attitudes
from current and past SHIL website users and users
of the bricks and mortar offices, through web-based, emailbased
and hand-delivered questionnaires. Our results are
based on an analysis and comparison of these populations
in order to find out what information needs users have, and
how these needs can be fulfilled online.
The remainder of the paper is organized in the following
way. The next section reviews the literature and builds the
theoretical foundations of everyday life information seeking
(ELIS) and previous results of information seeking in
Israel, as it appears in ELIS research. This is followed by a
section describing the methodology of the study. The fourth
section reports and discusses the results of the study, the
fifth its limitations, and the final section the conclusions
and recommendations.